The effectiveness of 360-degree feedback in public schools

Three hundred and sixty-degree feedback is a compelling process for personal and professional development that draws upon the knowledge of people within a person\u27s circle of influence, including supervisors, peers, direct reports, and oneself. Traditionally, 360-degree feedback surveys were developed as an administrative tool to aid an organization\u27s executive leaders and managers in making decisions regarding employee promotions, salary raises, and other personnel incentives. Today, 360-degree feedback programs are used primarily as a leadership development strategy to help people and organizations meet their goals. However, the use of 360-degree feedback is not widely used in the education sector due to the need for schools to prioritize traditional federal, state, and local district evaluations. The G360 Surveys™ strategically designed their survey tools to be efficient and intuitive in use, while inducing meaningful self-awareness and behavior change that align with skills needed for 21st century workplace success in any industry in any setting. This study was structured to investigate the impact of 360-degree programs in public schools using the G360 Emerging Leader Survey as the instrument for research. This study was completed using a quantitative and qualitative research approach with 14 public school educators across the country. One hundred percent of raters found the G360 surveys to provide meaningful feedback for their development and believed that effective use of the instrument would have a positive impact on a school\u27s culture and goals. All participants also said that they would recommend the program to a school or school district for use

Sustainable care improvement programs supported by undergraduate health care education

Background: The Care for Better Region program was developed to achieve sustainable care improvement focusing onfall prevention. Key ingredients involved improvement teams developing and implementing a falls reduction plan, PracticeDevelopment; facilitation of improvement teams by lecturers and undergraduate health care students; an implementation phase.This study evaluates the impact of this program on: (1) the number of falls incidents, and (2) the sustainability

Montgomery Moving Forward: A Decade of Community Engagement and Action

Montgomery Moving Forward (MMF) was established in 2012 to address multifaceted community challenges in Montgomery County, Maryland, and increase opportunities for cross-sector community stakeholders to exchange ideas and collaborate. MMF's collective impact efforts rely heavily on a Leadership Group (LG) drawn from public and private sectors in the county to move its initiatives forward. The LG also engages with local policymakers to help create institutional change in more formal ways, as shown in its Calls to Action for workforce development and early childhood education. The LG created a logic model to build shared understanding of its work and goals, and as a tool for communicating with community stakeholders. MMF's Accountability Workgroup developed performance measures aligned with the logic model and tenets of collective impact. In 2022 the workgroup surveyed MMF leaders and community partners to better understand the strengths and gaps of its collective impact activities

Met andere ogen: zorgverbetering en borging in het project Zorg voor Beter Regionaal

__Abstract__ Hoe kunnen we verbeteringen in de langdurende zorg borgen en verspreiden? Dat was een vraag die voortkwam uit de verbetertrajecten uit het landelijke verbeterprogramma voor de langdurende zorg Zorg voor Beter (ZvB). In het project ZvB Regionaal werd de ontwikkelde methode om valpreventie te verhogen in een regionale, door hbo-studenten ondersteunde opzet toegepast. Wij onderzochten hoe de toegevoegde strategieën uitwerkten en of en hoe zorgverbetering gerealiseerd is. Een van de belangrijkste uitkomsten is dat zorgmedewerkers leren valrisico’s van hun cliënten en risico’s in de woonomgeving van hun cliënten beter te zien. Zij leerden zelf toezicht te houden op hun werkpraktijk doordat zij gingen ‘kijken met andere ogen’

Characterization of small planets with Kepler and HARPS-N

A. S. Bonomo, L. Malavolta, and X. Dumusque acknowledge fundings from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under agreement No. 313014 “Measuring ETAEARTH: characterization of terrestrial planetary systems with Kepler, HARPS-N, and Gaia” [PI: Dr. Alessandro Sozzetti].The high-accuracy and high-precision HARPS-N spectrograph has been installed at the italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in La Palma approximately two years and a half ago. Eighty nights per year of Guaranteed Time of Observation are mostly dedicated to the radial-velocity (RV) follow up of Kepler small-size planetary candidates to establish their nature and to determine accurately their masses. We report on recent results of this ongoing RV campaign, including the recent characterization of the planetary system Kepler-101.Publisher PD

Sample Preparation Techniques for Growth-Promoting Agents in Various Mammalian Specimen Preceding MS-Analytics

The misuse of growth-promoting drugs such as beta-2 agonists and steroids is a known problem in farming and sports competitions. Prior to the analysis of biological samples via liquid chromatography (LC)–mass spectrometry (MS) or gas chromatography (GC)–MS, sufficient sample preparation is required to reliably identify or determine the residues of drugs. In practice, broad screening methods are often used to save time and analyze as many compounds as possible. This review was conceptualized to analyze the literature from 2018 until October 2023 for sample preparation procedures applied to animal specimens before LC- or GC-MS analysis. The animals were either used in farming or sports. In the present review, solid phase extraction (SPE) was observed as the dominant sample clean-up technique for beta-2 agonists and steroids, followed by protein precipitation. For the extraction of beta-2 agonists, mixed-mode cation exchanger-based SPE phases were preferably applied, while for the steroids, various types of SPE materials were reported. Furthermore, dispersive SPE-based QuEChERs were utilized. Combinatory use of SPE and liquid–liquid extraction (LLE) was observed to cover further drug classes in addition to beta-2 agonists in broader screening methods

Human Sulfotransferase Assays With PAPS Production in situ

For in vitro investigations on human sulfotransferase (SULT) catalyzed phase II metabolism, the costly cofactor 3′-phosphoadenosine-5′-phosphosulfate (PAPS) is generally needed. In the present study, we developed and optimized a new approach that combines SULT-dependent biotransformation using recombinant and permeabilized fission yeast cells (enzyme bags) with PAPS production in situ applying quality by design principles. In the initial application of the procedure, yeast cells expressing human SULT1A3 were used for the production of 4′-hydroxypropranolol-4-O-sulfate from 4-hydroxypropranolol. The optimized protocol was then successfully transferred to other sulfonation reactions catalyzed by SULT2A1, SULT1E1, or SULT1B1. The concomitant degradation of some sulfoconjugates was investigated, and further optimization of the reaction conditions was performed in order to reduce product loss. Also, the production of stable isotope labelled sulfoconjugates was demonstrated utilizing isotopically labelled substrates or 34S-sulfate. Overall, this new approach results in higher space-time yields while at the same time reducing experimental cost

A Systems Engineering Tool for Small Satellite Design

The growing popularity of small satellites for applications of all kinds has lead to a marked increase in the number of requests from customers of The Aerospace Corporation for studies involving small satellites. The existing design tools used by the Corporation for concept evaluation of large spacecraft have, in many cases, proven inadequate for these small spacecraft studies. As a result, Aerospace is developing a systems engineering tool to support the conceptual design of small satellites. The Aerospace Corporation’s small satellite systems engineering tool utilizes a spreadsheet-based approach to efficiently track information regarding the mass, power, and volume of the satellite subsystems. This subsystem information is derived through a variety of means, including analytical relationships, iterative solvers, and databases of components appropriate for small satellites. Physics based models for such factors as solar illumination and external torques have been incorporated into the tool to aid in the analysis of the design. In addition to data tracking, the spreadsheet approach used makes it easier for a concurrent engineering methodology to be applied to the design process. This means the effects of a change in one subsystem are immediately propagated to the other subsystems, and system-level effects are more easily identified. The end result is a tool that facilitates rapid systems-level concept evaluation and trade-space exploration in support of the small satellite design process. This paper describes The Aerospace Corporation’s small satellite systems engineering tool. The approach underlying the tool, as well as an overview of the implementation, relationships between the subsystems, and the flow of information are presented

High-precision photometry by telescope defocussing - VI. WASP-24, WASP-25 and WASP-26

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013/) under grant agreement nos. 229517 and 268421. This publication was supported by grants NPRP 09-476-1-078 and NPRP X-019-1-006 from Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). TCH acknowledges financial support from the Korea Research Council for Fundamental Science and Technology (KRCF) through the Young Research Scientist Fellowship Programme and is supported by the KASI (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute) grant 2012-1-410-02/2013-9-400-00. SG, XW and XF acknowledge the support from NSFC under the grant no. 10873031. The research is supported by the ASTERISK project (ASTERoseismic Investigations with SONG and Kepler) funded by the European Research Council (grant agreement no. 267864). DR, YD, AE, FF (ARC), OW (FNRS research fellow) and J Surdej acknowledge support from the Communauté française de Belgique – Actions de recherche concertées – Académie Wallonie-Europe.We present time series photometric observations of 13 transits in the planetary systems WASP-24, WASP-25 and WASP-26. All three systems have orbital obliquity measurements, WASP-24 and WASP-26 have been observed with Spitzer, and WASP-25 was previously comparatively neglected. Our light curves were obtained using the telescope-defocussing method and have scatters of 0.5–1.2 mmag relative to their best-fitting geometric models. We use these data to measure the physical properties and orbital ephemerides of the systems to high precision, finding that our improved measurements are in good agreement with previous studies. High-resolution Lucky Imaging observations of all three targets show no evidence for faint stars close enough to contaminate our photometry. We confirm the eclipsing nature of the star closest to WASP-24 and present the detection of a detached eclipsing binary within 4.25 arcmin of WASP-26.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Sub-m s−1^{-1} upper limits from a deep HARPS-N radial-velocity search for planets orbiting HD 166620 and HD 144579

Minimising the impact of stellar variability in Radial Velocity (RV) measurements is a critical challenge in achieving the 10 cm s$^{-1}$ precision needed to hunt for Earth twins. Since 2012, a dedicated programme has been underway with HARPS-N, to conduct a blind RV Rocky Planets Search (RPS) around bright stars in the Northern Hemisphere. Here we describe the results of a comprehensive search for planetary systems in two RPS targets, HD 166620 and HD 144579. Using wavelength-domain line-profile decorrelation vectors to mitigate the stellar activity and performing a deep search for planetary reflex motions using a trans-dimensional nested sampler, we found no significant planetary signals in the data sets of either of the stars. We validated the results via data-splitting and injection recovery tests. Additionally, we obtained the 95th percentile detection limits on the HARPS-N RVs. We found that the likelihood of finding a low-mass planet increases noticeably across a wide period range when the inherent stellar variability is corrected for using scalpels U-vectors. We are able to detect planet signals with $M\sin i \leq 1$ M$_\oplus$ for orbital periods shorter than 10 days. We demonstrate that with our decorrelation technique, we are able to detect signals as low as 54 cm s$^{-1}$, which brings us closer to the calibration limit of 50 cm s$^{-1}$ demonstrated by HARPS-N. Therefore, we show that we can push down towards the RV precision required to find Earth analogues using high-precision radial velocity data with novel data-analysis techniques.Comment: 7 tables, 24 figures (including those in appendix